Upon completion, the Federal Government will toll the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Abuja-Kano road and the second Niger Bridge to ensure maintenance and also to pay back loans used for them.

Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, disclosed this on Wednesday at the end of the 12th edition of the Bankers’ Committee Retreat in Lagos.

“The Federal Government approached us to provide some kind of bridge funding. The bridge funding is N170 billion so that those projects can move on with funding. The entire scope of those three projects is slightly above N1 trillion but the numbers are being worked on.

“I believe by the time the asset managers effectively come on board, the details of those projects and the remaining aspects of those funding would be coming in through debt and that is where the asset managers would come in with entire scope and then we would know the detailed cost of those three projects”, he said.

On Infrastructural Company Limited (InfraCo), Emefiele said that N1 trillion out of the N15 trillion is equity, being contributed by the CBN, African Finance Corporation (AFC) and Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).

“The remaining N14 trillion would be accessed from debt market. And I must say that we are happy here that these are substantially going to be naira funding. The banks have large pool of funds, the pension administrators have large pool of funds and we are reasonably optimistic that more than 50 percent or two third of this money is going to be raised locally before we begin to think about accessing international finance.

“We would try as much as possible to limit debt for foreign currencies particularly knowing that some of these projects and revenues are going to be generated with local currency. Where foreign currencies are needed, we will also take those and then be able to use them.

“What is important is that within the Nigerian financial system, there is a lot of idle capital or idle funds that can be channeled if packaged the way InfraCo is set up to give comfort to investors especially our local investors to really put their funds in these projects.

“This is a brilliant alternative financing methodology that has been brought up and we seek to really look into this. It intends to help government and private sector to raise finance, without necessarily encumbering the balance sheet of the Federal Government of Nigeria”.

The committee, he said, still believes that a lot work still needs to be done to strengthen Nigeria’s recovery.

He said, “It is only when output of GDP exceeds population growth that we can begin to say that our citizens are beginning to see prosperity.

“We believe that Nigeria can feed itself and that Nigeria can produce what to eat and that everything needs to be done for us to move away from a situation where everything is imported. That we need to get to a stage where we bring our manufacturing industries back to life again”.

He added that “for us to beat our chest and say that we have sustainable inclusive growth in the country, that we as banks, working with government must do everything possible to diversify the Nigerian economy. Or do anything possible to reduce the rate of unemployment in the country. (Courtesy Daily Independent)

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